


In A Way That Matters

by Head_Of_Ianus



Category: James Bond (Craig movies)
Genre: Angst, Betrayal, Blood and Injury, Dreams and Nightmares, Gen, Hurt James Bond, Implied animal abuse, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Implied/Referenced Torture, Mansfield is Alive, Mind Games, Mind Manipulation, Mommy Issues, Raoul Silva is sort of Alive, Symbolism, not very nice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-29
Updated: 2020-07-29
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:22:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,685
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25591270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Head_Of_Ianus/pseuds/Head_Of_Ianus
Summary: Olivia Mansfield survives, and retires after giving Bond a last mission to finish for her. It all goes to shit, because it always does, doesn't it? And unfortunately, the old M isn't the only one that survived somehow.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 5





	In A Way That Matters

**Author's Note:**

> For the Angst Prompt Table "Siren" and "Blaze" for 007 Fest 2020. Hope you like it :)

“How pathetic that out of all her guard dogs, you are the one that happily wags its tail as it’s taken behind the shed.“

James Bond's eyelids fluttered open with a single strike. Walls, painted the colour of blood pooling to a dark drop in a wound, welcomed him back. They were lined with their closest friends, the shelves of folders stacking atop each other: Some fraying at the edges, some torn apart, some burnt, some barely touched, they all judged him with motionless coldness, ink etched into the paper without forgiveness. The folders would never forget.

Cuts were littered across Bond's face and arms were his dirtied shirt was ripped enough to leave them visible, angry red and infected. His voice rasped and gave in when he tried to answer. When he finally managed to speak, it was little but a sandpaper rash:

“Why don‘t you just stay dead?“

“How many more times must I explain to you that I am, dear James? The issue is that Mummy isn‘t dead — her being alive has gotten you in quite some trouble now, hasn‘t it?“

“She's just asked me if I could help her out. I decided on my own to do this, she didn‘t order me.“

Terrible blue silk reflected slightly in the dim room and covered Tiago Rodriguez like a second skin. On his neatly folded pocket square, decaying mint and marigold were embracing on an off-white background. An atrocious motive. Still, his hair had returned to soft, luxurious walnut brow, and his face was a grimace of a grin with too many teeth. These days even that looked welcoming.

“Look, you offered yourself up for her as a sacrificial lamb once again, although she has burned you quite often now. Maybe she likes you so much because you lack basic critical thinking.“

“You are the one with Mommy Issues, don‘t tell me about being stupid.“

“Are you so sure about _me_ being the one with Mommy Issues, James?“

Bond's muscles were straining, but he couldn‘t move his feet and get up from his seat, it was as though they were stuck to the ground with glue — Rodriguez on the opposite end of the table smiled in triumph, arms raised, as something green was sprouting from the tips of his fingers. He was grander than he had ever managed to be when alive.

The kudzu had spread since last time. Twines had long since eaten the corners of the room. They distorted the portraits of familiar faces smiling into cruel grimaces he barely dared to recognize. Slithering, slimy, it had invaded the ceiling and made its green hellish way towards the iron chandelier that once had radiated soft orange light. Kudzu had dulled it to a repulsive green with leaves of vine, winding and dangling downwards until lilac blossoms were almost touching the splitting wood of the mahogany table that had once been shining with health.

“Drink a bit of wine, it will help calm your temper.“

A glass of red wine balanced precariously between two abysses of the surface, and Bond went to take it against his own will with furrowed brows and clenched hands, strong enough the crystal clear fragility might shatter between his fingers in a last defensive attack and impale itself in his palm in shards:

“You are trying to fuck with me.“

“I don‘t need to, you already know the truth. You are just suppressing it because you are too much of a coward to face it, dear.“

The foul sweet taste of the wine rose bile in Bond's throat, and he swallowed only to gag and cough, muscles bulging in his arms as he cradled the armrests of the satin-clad armchair, and suddenly kudzu was slithering around his hands and forearms and pinning them down, immobilizing him. He struggled against it, but the twines just kept weaving into each other, until the sheen of sweat building on his skin was enough to dampen his shirt.

“Stop struggling against it, and give in for once in your life. Drink up.“

Rodriguez's stride around the greening table was unwavering until he was close enough to Bond to tower over him with an unblinking glare cast downwards. Bond groaned in response, a sound like a wounded animal panicking to get away from a predator when the sharp glinting teeth had already sunken into its neck. Rodriguez smiled with a cruel twist to the corners of his lips. Staring up, Bond licked his dry chapped lips to rasp out:

“You are lying. You are messing with me. Fuck you.“

A sharp crack, and Bond registered the slap across his face just when it had been delivered and his head had already been whipped around. All the softness the dim light had allowed on Rodriguez's face was swallowed by hard lines around his mouth as he grasped Bond's jaw with violent fingers to force his unwilling jaw open. There was no joke left in his eyes, just rage spitting out from between his grounding teeth as he forced the foul wine syrupy wine down the other's throat:

“I‘m not lying, I couldn‘t, because I am in your head. I am you. I am the voice in your mind that knows the truth.“

Every sip and every word felt like a dull rusted blade was ripping open his esophagus from the inside.

“And here's the truth: She doesn‘t care for you. She doesn‘t care for us. You are going to die in a ditch for the bitch and she won‘t even fucking blink.“

Between sips trying to drown him and fill his lungs, Bond gasped once again:

“ — I know! I fucking know!“

The glass was empty, but the grip on his jaw didn‘t soften. A drop of wine was leaking from his lips and running down towards Rodriguez's fingertips. Maybe it was his blood, not the wine. A twine of kudzu was closing around Bond's throat. His pulse was thumping against the firm stem.

“Of course you know, otherwise I wouldn‘t be telling you, James! But you don‘t believe it, and you won‘t admit how it turns your gut -“

Rodriguez's face was inching closer to his.

“How upsetting it truly is to be betrayed like this.“

His face was mirroring itself in Rodriguez's eyes, and in his own reflection's eyes, he once again spotted Rodriguez, in whose eyes he mirrored himself, and over and over and over -

“ _You won‘t admit that you are becoming me_.“

Bond gagged, and Rodriguez was letting go of his jaw with disgusted anger, and he was leaving, turning around and revealing the gaping wound in his back. Why couldn‘t he stay in his grave?

Carved into the void-like black table was Medea, teeth glinting and feral grimace with barely a glint of humanity left. Winding snakes curling around disastrous blood-red rubies formed the handle of her dagger, and it appeared that they are moving, slithering between her spindly fingers as she murdered her two sons. The red dahlias woven into her dark hair were the colour of their blood.

Kudzu was creeping along the parquet and entangling the table’s and Bond's legs.

“I wish I could kill you.“

It spilled from Bond's mouth before he had even articulated the thought in his mind, but it was true, despair more than hate burning in his throat. On the opposing side of the table, Rodriguez snorted a laugh and waved his hand in a dismissive fashion. The vines were letting go of his arms, freeing them to take hold of his chest, nestling against every bump and cave of his torso. Maeda's dagger was resting in his hands with terrible weight and scales of vipers were moving in his palm. Rodriguez's arms were wide open, inviting him to aim with a provoking, tired gin.

And Bond aimed and threw and — hit, he thought.

The putrid scent of cheap grape bubble gum was stuffing his lungs. His mind was fogging up terribly. The vines around his throat tightened.

He blinked, and the dagger was in his own chest. He coughed — wheezed up blood as his oxygen was running short -

Imposing, Rodriguez towered, voice distorting as the corners of the room were fading and every inch of his skin was being scratched raw by the vines enveloping him within seconds -

“James, dear, give in. I‘m a siren singing a song that's gotten stuck in your head, I am an interwoven plot of mushrooms, I am a plant of kudzu taking over your mind and eating away at it. _You cannot kill me in a way that matters_.“

Bond woke up with a terrible start to cold cement underneath him and Rodriguez's voice echoing in his ears.

Then, he heard once again the screeching off tortured rabbit screams played by over modulated speakers to keep him awake, and memories fell back into place like a puzzle solving itself to reveal it's motive: The job he‘d taken for his old M after she‘d retired, how everything had gone tits up, and he had been captured by one group or another. In patches, he remembered the last three months.

If he‘d had any energy before, it left him now in a rush to make space for the blinding pain in every corner of his body, from toenails to hairline. He wouldn‘t dare look down at his own body.

Maybe Rodriguez was right. Maybe nobody was coming.

A ghost of firm kudzu slithered along the delicate skin covering his Adam‘s apple.

* * *

He had long lost track, but one day (or night?) dark smoke started creeping into his cell through the slit underneath his door, and Bond stared at it for a long moment as he inhaled it and let it clog up his lungs. Somehow, it tasted like cheap grape bubble gum. Outside, his captors were yelling and running, abandoning base. A perfect chance to escape.

_You cannot kill me in a way that matters._

Bond waited for the blaze of fire as it ate through the door and caged him in, although his heart was racing. Maybe there was a way to kill Rodriguez that mattered.

**Author's Note:**

> Kudzu is quite a fascinating plant, and if you want to look up a few things about this invasive beast, here's a link: https://www.invasive.org/alien/pubs/midatlantic/pumol.htm
> 
> Medea is one of the most important women in greek mythology, here's her story if you want to get into that some more: https://www.britannica.com/topic/Medea-Greek-mythology  
> Not exactly the best match for the analogy I was trying but I couldn't come with anything better, sorry :')
> 
> Regarding the noise of tortured bunnys: A) sorry B) check out the Waco siege, during which the FBI used that sound mixed with "These Boots Are Made For Walking" as psychological torture and you might catch my drift


End file.
